During our latest round of shoulda, woulda, coulda catch-up, we had a friendly debate about the value of revisiting the past. He insisted that it’s a healthy exercise, whether our memories are dramatically romanticized or even tinged with regret. Although I didn’t immediately admit it, he was right: Staring straight ahead can be myopic. Worse, we lose the valuable gifts tucked inside those rear view glances: context, life lessons and wisdom.

(c) Bill Frymire

Perhaps you’ve noticed that we can’t always see where we’re going as clearly as where we’ve been. It’s the birthing chamber for those “If I only knew then what I know now” groans.

Ahhh, if our foresight was as 20/20 as our hindsight, life would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? But let’s be grateful that we have eyes in the back of our heads. With that hindsight, we can squeeze every drop of value from our experiences—pleasant and otherwise.

Easier to believe than to think

It doesn’t take Jesus to tell us that putting new wine in old skins will make an absolute mess. It doesn’t take Einstein to tell us that doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is simply wacko. That great teacher, Experience, has told us these things on numerous occasions.

It doesn’t profit us to blindfold the eyes in back of our heads or power down our brains when discerning truth from possibility. By now, we’ve had millions of chances to be “born again”: clear out the debris from thoughts and beliefs that we know, from experience, don’t work and let our evolutionary lessons inhabit this new space—staying open to the possibility that new discoveries might replace them, as well.

Is Earth really flat?

We don’t have to rely on what others told us to believe. For example, several Bible scriptures, including Revelation 7:1, Isaiah 11:12, Job 28:24 and 37:3,  tell us that Earth is flat. Eyes open, brains in full throttle, do we embrace these scriptures as Truth (the Word of God), or as insight into what ancient people believed was true?

During an online search for images depicting the “four corners of the Earth,” as described in Revelation 7:1, I discovered the existence of the International Flat Earth Society. Its members are dedicated to “unraveling the true mysteries of the universe and demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax.”

Half of what you see, none of what you hear

I also found the image I was seeking, created in 1893, complete with ten Biblical scriptures that “condemn the globe theory.” Among them, included scriptures claiming that the earth, moon and sun stand still.

In the tradition of new wine in old skins, this map presents us with a round and square Earth. It was created using the same methodology as the Christian clergy at the Councils of Nicaea in 325 and 787 CE, who poured an Old Testament God inside New Testament wineskin. All over the floor splashed a bi-polar deity who is genocidal, filicidal, difficult to please, smiting, full of wrath, judgmental, homophobic, punitive, capricious, vindictive, sadistic, AND the unconditionally loving, forgiving father of prodigal children.

Does believing make it so?

Every minute of our lives, we have the opportunity to apply the lessons we’ve learned and use them as guides as we progress along our life paths. Instead, we repeat phrases and hold expectations that they will perform as if they are true, even though we’ve learned through observation and experience, they are not. Phrases that top that list: “Believing makes it so” and “What we think about, we bring about.”

Millions of us quote modern scribes who declare that we can manifest whatever circumstances, possessions and relationships into the physical world that we desire. All we have to do is “claim” them or follow a certain formula or invoke a particular spiritual law.

With all due respect to the writers of those theories, nothing we have experienced or witnessed validates their claim. When our eyes open and brains are in full throttle rather than idling in gullibility, we know that laws produce the same result, 100% of the time for 100% of those affected, independent of our thoughts or beliefs. Yet we keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result.

We also know that laws don’t have to be consciously invoked. When’s the last time you you invoked the Law of Gravity so that you could walk, sit or hang a picture without anything floating away?

Is possibility a law?

Anything is possible. But if the Law of Attraction works the way modern sages say, everything to which we devoted dominant thought and emotional energy, and visualized in great detail would appear in our experience. Nothing else.

In other words, there would be no dictionary entries for surprise or disappointment. We’d be in total control of our experience here; in fact, we’d have dominion over Earth, just as the ancient scribes believed. Wouldn’t that make our physical/ego selves’ toes curl with delight?

Opening the eyes in back of our heads

Perhaps it’s time for us to see a bigger picture, and make a game of it, as creative souls do. My dear friend Joe’s wonder-filled game of “what if…” seems perfect for this:

• What if God is so much greater than the brain-limiting images of a huge being who looks like a human and lives in outer space?
• What if God is a divine, immortal and invisible intelligence and we are made in that likeness and image, rather than the other way around?
• What if we have misidentified ourselves as mere mortals?
• What if we, as divine, immortal and invisible souls are much more invincible and intelligent than the sensory human body costumes we are temporarily wearing?
• What if, in the divine, immortal and invisible world of Spirit, everything is perfect, in Divine Order?
• What if, as divine, immortal and invisible souls, we are precisely where we want to be, having the experiences we want to have for this bat-of-an-eyelash moment in Universal Time?
• What if attempts by our mortal, sensory human costumes to control the divinely perfect experience we’ve designed simply don’t work?
• What if we let go of our limited vision of ourselves and consciously sought to identify ourselves as the divine, immortal omniscient spirit within us?
• What if we trusted the Divine Within to be our pilots, instead of using our bodies and the brains within them to manipulate the circumstances, possessions and people in our physical lives?

If there is such a thing as an Aquarian Age, I wondered, when does our universal clock transition it from dawning to the full blown thing? And what on Earth will it look and feel like?

If the song was wrong about the planets, it could be wrong about the “Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust, and no more falsehoods or derisions” part. I decided to check it out.

I was surprised to discover that some folks believe we’re fully into the Aquarian Age. In fact, they say it began centuries before the first flower child was born, all the way back as the 1780s. The marker: Demands for human rights began to escalate.

Needless to say, that’s in dispute. Those in another camp clock the arrival at November 11, 2011. And yet another group says hold our horses. The Age doesn’t appear until next year’s winter solstice: December 21, 2012.

OK, so it appears to be a guessing game, even among those who study astrology. Do they at least agree on the effect the Aquarian Age will have on the planet and its inhabitants? Negatory.

Most predict a period of awakening, a more enlightened and less superstitious period in human evolution that resembles the “Hair” lyricist’s description. But at least one prominent astrologer has a darker prediction. Robert Zoller sees the Aquarian world as one in which the “secretive power-hungry elites seek absolute power over others.” (Sound familiar?) Zoller’s other indicator: In the Aquarian Age, religion, which he called “the opiate of the masses,” will be viewed as offensive.

If Zoller is correct, the “Occupy” movement sweeping the planet may fulfill one of his criteria. Closer to home, I may have encountered the other. It was nothing short of offensive when a gentleman bearing a handful of little blue religious tracts interrupted my afternoon stroll on one of Chicago’s last 60-degree days.

He looked me dead in the eye, lowered his voice as if he was giving me an insider tip on a potent stock, and said, “Make sure a place is reserved for you in heaven.”

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

At what point in human evolution are we going to stop imagining heaven in outer space? For centuries, the blissful home of God and the angels was on the other side of the clouds. Commercial air travel busted that myth. Soon after that, space exploration forced heaven’s location farther into the distance. Today, instead of that sunny place we enjoy when flying above the fluffy clouds, heaven sits in the dark, in a void. How divine! Who wants to spend all eternity there?

On one hand, I totally understand why we cling to the idea that the God in the Bible now lives millions of light years away. He’s unpredictable: either loving and forgiving or violently angry, sadistically punitive. And He has been known to kill every living thing.

If God is a gigantic male being who lives beyond the farthest star in our galaxy, isn’t it more likely that our Golden Rule violations might go unnoticed? Secondly, if we believe that this gigantic male being has a history of boastfully committing genocide and harming his creation with plagues and wars, wouldn’t we want some distance—lots and lots of it?

Many of us even believe that God blames all of us for the sins of our prehistoric ancestors, and won’t forgive his sinful children without subjecting the only innocent one to an excruciatingly painful death by torture.

Yes, I truly understand why anyone who believes that God does such sadistic things would have to position him in outer space. I simply wish they’d do it in the privacy of their prayer closets and not on city streets.

Full moon: November 10, 2011

While taking an early evening walk down Michigan Avenue a few nights ago, I spotted that bright 11/10/11 full moon hanging over the lake. Before I could grab my BlackBerry to capture it, I heard a familiar voice blaring from a nearby speaker.

“You can’t go to heaven unless you repent your sins! You must repent!”

Aaargh! This gravelly voice of doom has accosted downtown Chicago pedestrians for at least 40 years that I can remember. In all those years, I don’t recall ever seeing the al fresco preacher after sunset or anywhere but State Street. Perhaps he was disoriented by the Universal shift toward Aquarius and he landed on Michigan Avenue in the dark, waving his tattered Bible in one hand and a microphone in the other, warning liars, thieves, smokers, “homosec-shals” and everyone “living in sin” that God is not going to let them into heaven.

He echoes the belief of many who are heavily invested in this denigrating portrayal of a god who creates all of us but heinously allows only a few to return home. They believe God will cast the rest of us, billions upon billions, into a fiery pit. Never mind that dead bodies can’t feel fire (or cold), and never mind that only a sadist would subject his child to eternal torture. This is the god they love and worship, and I’m not going to argue with them.

As the sleeping prophet Edgar Cayce once said, “You grow to heaven. You don’t go to heaven.”

As for me and my house, we will serve a God of Love, an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God who lives in the hearts of all—a God that does nothing Love would not do, who holds a space in His heart for all His children, and harms no one for any reason.

Be it Aquarius or cheddar, I await the Age when “Peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars.”

(Cue the 5th Dimension): “Let the sun shine! Let the sun shine in! The sun shine in.”

When we look at Earth’s stage from here, the first thing we notice is that every performer is wearing a costume that functions exclusively in this atmosphere. Most of the actors appear to be following a script., although there are some who are trying to do improv with varying degrees of success. (Ha’ mercy, entering the stage without a plan can be a recipe for disaster!)

You’ll also notice that not one of those actors thinks Earth’s theater is real Life. Not one of them entered intending to stay. Each came with its own purpose, time line, to-do list and exit strategy. If you could see their scripts, you’d have some insight into these souls’ history, and some context for this phase of their eternal lives. More important, you might even discover context for your own.

I believe that is the gift that Troy Davis and others present us when they perform in front of global audiences. If we’re paying attention, we might grasp the lessons they’re teaching. We might ask, “What do they want me to know about myself, as an immortal soul?”

Know thyself

No one is here by accident. If we are to discover and accomplish our purpose for the visit, we must be conscientious and receptive to new information. It could come from anywhere, even from souls playing the roles of former Death Row inmates Troy Davis and Samuel David Crowe.

We can’t intrude and read their scripts. But when we look at their contrasting outcomes, we have some clues about the scripts’ content and their souls’ histories. Through them, we might discover more about ourselves.

Credit: Ga. Dept. of Corrections/Reuters

Both Davis and Crowe were in the Death Row section of Earth’s stage, convicted of murder. Davis (left) was executed, despite pleas from Pope Benedict XVI, former FBI Director William S. Sessions, Bishop Desmond Tutu, former president Jimmy Carter and the prayers and online petitions of tens of thousands of people around the world. Crowe (right) was spared, due mostly to the efforts of a lesser known group, Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Why were their outcomes so different?

If we look beyond the color of the costumes these souls were wearing, one answer is obvious: The outcomes served each soul’s purpose and honored each one’s schedule. No one, not even the Pope, can override the will of a soul on a mission. If a soul wants to leave its body—even if the ego in that body adamantly disagrees—the soul will do it. According to the evidence, the soul inside Troy Davis’s body wanted total freedom on September 21, 2011, or it would still be confined to it. Just as clearly, the soul inside Crowe’s body had not scheduled its departure on May 22, 2008, or it would have left behind human remains.

But there’s also a less obvious answer: As souls, Davis and Crowe have been alive forever, and have different karmic histories, which naturally results in different scripts with different outcomes. As far as we know, the soul that became Davis might have gotten away with murder or falsely accused someone else of murder while performing another role, in another play, at another time in its immortal life. Just speculating.

But what if that really is what happened? The soul is very much aware that a human lifetime on Earth is only a bat-of-an-eyelash experience in the Universal time/space continuum. Why wouldn’t it take a second to restore balance to another situation?

In this case, punishment for a crime Davis didn’t commit would balance. It would be considered a victory, a mission accomplished. What if it came with a karmic bonus? What if, in the process, the soul inspired a multitude of people to take the next step in man’s evolution, to move beyond revenge, barbarism and flawed man-made law to become more humane, if not divine. A twofer! Again, I’m not stating fact, just offering some possibilities, based on the real Life principles we use in Drama Queen Workshops:

• Life is always fair.
• God is never far.
• Death is not THE END.
• Absolutely nothing is unforgivable.

And that brings us to Crowe. Based on the testimonials of those who were advocating on his behalf, Crowe was very repentant, remorseful, and took full responsibility for his crime. With this context, it’s possible that the soul that became Crowe chose a different technique for restoring balance: He forgave himself. That’s a little-known option that substitutes for the “having it done to you” part. I discovered it in one of my readings years ago. After seeing how spectacularly it neutralized negative karma for me, I now highly recommended. (I related that life-altering situation in EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens, pp.116-118)

That brings us to the final question in our dreaded karma conversation:

How can we use and share the gifts these souls have given us?

Davis and Crowe remind us to be more conscious as we perform our roles and interact with others on Earth’s stage. I’m reminding you to maintain top-of-mind awareness that we are immortal souls temporarily wearing the costume of human beings. No matter what skin we’re in, the Laws of Balance and Reciprocity will apply to us; so it is in our best interest to doing nothing to someone else that we would not want done to us at some point in our eternal lives: That means everything from being dishonest or taking something that doesn’t belong to us to harming or depriving someone of their body.

It’s also in our best interest to discover why we’re here on this planet at this time. It’s so easy to become distracted by the sights and sounds of Earth. We’re susceptible to messages that we are in control, that we can have anything we want. That applies to the real you, as soul, not your body costume. Use those prayers and affirmations to find clues to your soul’s purpose. Pay attention to what it embraces and what it rejects.

Jobs, relationships,and entrepreneurial income may keep eluding you for any number of reasons. Take the time to cultivate a relationship with your real self to find out why. Ask for guidance and follow it. Part of the reason it’s said that it’s so difficult for a rich man to get into “heaven,” that state of peaceful consciousness, is that he’s too distracted by the outer world to find the real treasure within.

Periods of lack could be the most evolutionary of your soul’s existence. Replace stress with real success.

We keep looking at life from a human perspective when that literally scratches the surface. From the viewpoint of soul, I can confidently say, “This is not Pat’s life, it’s mine. She’s necessary so that I can be visible in Earth’s atmosphere. Through her, I am fulfilling my purpose for coming. The Divine within me is not here to do her will. She is here to do ours.”

Balance is natural; balancing karma is a victory, no matter what it looks and feels like on Earth’s stage. Davis’s victory demonstrates that real Life is greater than our physical eyes can see, and as souls, we are more powerful and present than we realize. Our immortal souls’ desires are more potent than prayers, thoughts, visualizations and other manipulations.

We could save ourselves a lot of frustration and disappointment by trusting our immortal selves to know what is for the Highest Good in any situation. Trusting the Divine within, instead of becoming attached to the one created in our mortal brains, enables us to embrace any outcome, and know that all is well.

Having said that, I was hopeful that barbarism would not rule the day on September 21, and my heart broke when I read the news of the execution. But I trusted that everything was in Divine Order, happening as it should, no matter what it looked like here on the stage. I trusted that by sacrificing his body (not his life), Troy Davis made a huge difference in the world.

And he did.

Yes, our bodies have evolved over billions of years; but it appears that we have not yet shed our Neanderthal nature. We still have a death grip on barbarism, justifying our behavior with man-made scriptures mandating that offenders “shall surely be put to death.”

With every highly publicized act of inhumanity such as this, it’s beginning to dawn on us that our primordial behaviors are just as beastly now as they were then. Were it not for souls such as the one who came to play the role of Troy Davis, we might still be brutally clubbing each other for sport, and offering the bodies of dead innocents as live sacrifices to imaginary mountain- and sky-dwelling gods.

It’s no coincidence that Davis came to Earth during a period when electronic communication galvanizes millions in minutes to advocate for a cause. He made us stop whatever we were doing and cry out for justice, compassion and reason. Rallying around this cause reacquainted us with the dormant Divine within our souls. It felt good, it felt right to declare that the man-made law of capital punishment is always a barbaric and inappropriate response in a civilized world.

So why were we stunned and outraged the next day by news reports that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, which had been so adamant about killing Davis, had aborted the execution of a confessed killer in 2008? Samuel David Crowe was only three hours away from a lethal injection when his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

“Unfair! we screamed. “Double standard!”

More than meets the human eye

Limited by the sight lines of Earth’s stage and blinded by its footlights, all we could see was the inequity the treatment of the two Death Row inmates: The black man, whose guilt had not been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, was murdered. The white man, whose guilt had never been questioned, was spared.

On the surface, we saw blatant bigotry. But in the balcony of this drama, our Higher Self saw something else. Of course It would: It has crystal clear vision. It sees many dimensions beyond this fantasy called physical life. It sees real Life.

The Higher Self knows that real Life is always fair and it always makes sense—no matter what it looks like from Earth’s stage. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and unconditionally loving God would not have created it any other way.

Looking through that lens, what could logically explain the heartbreaking scene we were witnessing? Rather than give God the benefit of the doubt, most of us are satisfied with concluding that Life and the God who created It are simply unfair. We are too afraid to look on the other side of the stray thread of the Universal blanket protecting our fearful little heads to see what’s there. We are not open to the possibility that anything exists beyond the physical world.

If we dared to believe in an awesome God, we’d discover that real Life is not constantly deteriorating matter; it’s invisible, invincible and immortal energy. Life cannot be saved or taken. It has no beginning or end. Its governed by divine laws that are simple and cause no harm.

The rule is golden for a reason

One of those laws in real Life is balance. Like gravity, the physical law with which we’re most familiar, balance is in play all the time; it applies to everyone, equally. Balance is the “eye for an eye” undercurrent that flows through real Life. When we create imbalance in our relationships with ourselves and others, the process of restoring that balance naturally begins. It doesn’t require our awareness or effort, much as gravity doesn’t require anything from us.

We lose sight of that law when our souls are weighted down by human body costumes. Everyday is Halloween: We become totally immersed in our characters; we lose ourselves in our roles; we focus our attention on achieving stature and acquiring physical things. We treat others based on the costumes they’re wearing. If they’re not the same color or class as ours, we become suspect or worse, superior.

We lose awareness of real Life’s simple law of balance: Do unto others as you would have them to do unto to you. We forget that the process of restoring balance is the reason the rule is Golden: Whatever you do will be done to you.

We tend not to believe that, or we think that there are exceptions to the rule, because we don’t always witness or experience the restoration of natural balance within the bat-of-an-eyelash time frame that our souls are wearing a particular body. It only means that we’ve forgotten something else: Consequences are not attached to our mortal body costumes; they are tied to our immortal souls.

It’s the lucky soul who experiences the reaping while wearing the same costume of the sower. At least some dots can be connected. Imagine the whiplash when what goes around comes around while a soul is playing an entirely different role. The occurrence seems inexplicable, maybe event unfair. Those who are familiar with my soul’s checkered past, which I discovered during many years of spiritual sleuthing expeditions and shared in my memoir, EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens, know precisely what I’m talking about.

Every goodbye ain’t gone

We’re deluded into thinking that we’re mortals; when our bodies die, we’re dead. But anyone who has felt the presence of a loved one who has “passed” (note the active verb) or experienced a “something told me to…” moment knows that there are more life forms here than we can see with our human eyes.

If you’ve ever attended a seminar with author Rebecca Rosen, as I had the great privilege of doing during her book tour a couple of years ago (Thanks again, Lyle), it’ll remove all doubt: Life is invisible; it’s not a physical body. I didn’t doubt it at all when I walked in the door, and was stunned and exhilarated to witness the exchange of information between souls and the relatives they’d left behind. One of the skeptics there, a young widower whose wife died following childbirth, left the auditorium believing in eternal Life, after speaking with her soul that evening.

It seemed that she and the others were determined to prove that they are still alive. Some repeated things their loved ones had said in the car, on the way to the theater, or talked about food they had just eaten or prepared. One soul thanked his widow for still leaving his slippers next to his favorite chair. He even mentioned that he was hanging out with his long-time buddy. The widow didn’t even know the man was dead! They’d lost contact.

What I’ve learned is that no one “rests in peace,” a phrase highlighting our delusion that at some point, we will be dead bodies, not vibrant souls. On Facebook right now, there’s an “R. I. P. Troy Davis” page. True, Troy’s body is supine; but he’s not resting in it. He is the soul, the life, and the breath that left it.

As an immortal soul, he lives and is active, just as he was actively living before he donned that body costume 42 years ago. I have no doubt he was relieved last week to awake on the other side of the prison walls for the first time in 22 years. But how did he get there in the first place?

Spirit is directing me to delete the rest of this post because everyone’s not ready for the answer. For those who are, meet me at Part Two: The Dreaded Karma Conversation.

Yes, I am going there. If you have the stamina and an open heart, I invite you climb to the next level in Balcony of Life. Quite possibly, things will become even more clear from that viewpoint.

No, it’s not 490! It’s the number of times we’re supposed to forgive those who offend us. Oddly enough, more than two thousand years after a profound and rather revolutionary Jewish rabbi taught this lesson, most of us—even those who profess belief in this man’s teachings—still can’t do the math.

Should we blame the teacher? I don’t think so. He delivered his lesson quite clearly and simply. I’m more inclined to believe that the problem lies in the text. It is more than a little confusing, as evidenced by the findings of a recent Gallup poll.

Researchers found that 49% of Americans believe the Bible, the text from which our views of forgiveness are founded, is the inspired word of God. But these same people don’t think it should be taken literally. Clearly, someone’s confused.

The truth and nothing but the truth, so help me...

When did we stop taking Truth at its word? And, I’m sorry, if God inspired texts that can’t be taken literally, what was the point of the divine inspiration? Heck, mere mortals could have simply made up some stuff.

Actually, 17% of the poll respondents think the text was totally man-made, a collection of legends and fables. My guess is that the latter were merely brave enough to say what the 49% were thinking. If we do the math, 66% of us have discovered that the Bible contains information that is untrue, conflicting or incorrectly recorded.

The implications are tremendous. When overlook obvious errors in the text and call it the Word of God, what are we saying about the credibility and trustworthiness of that Word?

Some scholars take this very seriously. For the last 53 years, for example, Orthodox Jewish researchers at a Jerusalem university have been poring over ancient manuscripts, separating the wheat from the chaff. They’re trying to strip the Hebrew Bible down to its oldest and most authentic text. So far, they’ve unearthed evidence that people have been toying with the Bible for centuries. According to a report on this pivotal research called The Bible Project, scholars have concluded that

“This text at the root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was somewhat fluid for long periods of its history, and that its transmission through the ages was messier and more human than most of us imagine.”

That explains why it took more than five decades for the team to complete a mere three books of the Bible. And we think we’re reading The Word of God.

The messy and human transmission (and let’s not forget tampering) is precisely why I think we can’t wrap our heads or arms around the famous rabbi’s lessons on forgiveness. The tampered text, in not so subtle ways, actually teaches us to be unforgiving.

©2010-2011 ~tawfi2 (Mohammed tawfik on deviantart.com)

As kids, we learn that God does not forgive

One of the earliest stories in the Bible is of the Great Flood. For centuries this alleged genocide has been romanticized, most recently in whimsical children’s books. At a very early age, we learned about forgiveness from this story: The Almighty God, Who could do anything “He” desired, preferred to sadistically “destroy everything living thing” [Genesis 7:4] rather than wave the wand of forgiveness over the humans in “His” creation. Not sure what the animals and plants did to deserve this fate.

Of course, our parents and religious teachers didn’t highlight God’s lack of forgiveness; but it is the unmistakable raison d’être in this ghastly story. Instead, we were served a sugar-coated version of the tale, complete with beautiful cartoons depicting the smiling faces of wild but happy animals patiently prancing onto the ark in a polite queue or peeping out of portholes as if they were on a Mediterranean cruise. 

Wait a minute! Portholes? According to the story, God ordered Noah to put only one window in that massive vessel—and, excuse me, it wasn’t in the cargo hold. But happy faces are great subterfuge to keep us from realizing that they were about to suffer a punishment worst than death. What child wouldn’t be horrified by the image of carnivores and herbivores crammed into the same dark space? It was nothing less than a Happy Meal for the predators whose prey had no chance of escaping. If kids could figure that out, certainly God could.

And can we talk about poor Noah and his fam? Those poor folks were not only forced to live with the aroma of wild animals and fecal matter; they also suffered the trauma of smelling the stench and, if they could get to that one window, seeing thousands of bloated bodies—infants, children, adults, the disabled and elderly—floating around them for weeks or as much as a year, depending upon how long it took the water to recede, which depended upon which verse of Genesis you read. If their preservative-free, unrefrigerated food supply could last that long, who in the world could eat under those conditions?

Common sense questions are rarely asked by Believers because thinking and questioning are truly the enemies of “blind faith.” In fact, they are considered heretical. (If you think I’m being sacrilegious, simply pick up the copy of whatever version of the Bible you have right now and tell me how many times the facts change in the Flood story, from verse to verse.) So just in case God really is a genocidal maniac rather than the unconditionally forgiving father of prodigal children, we’ve decided to believe some or all of these stories, even the second major lesson in forgiveness, which is even scarier.

Another Lesson: Forgiveness Requires Suffering

This one’s probably going to make some Christians uncomfortable. The most unforgiving (as in not Christlike) among them might even throw rotting tomatoes into the balcony, dramatically proving my point: Forgiveness is an elementary math problem that we haven’t been able to learn, despite having a Master Teacher. But if we’re ever going to solve this math problem, someone’s got to speak truth to those who would try to control our thoughts and beliefs through fear. Needless to say, the Loud Mouth got the assignment.

Like the Great Flood story, we’ve sugar-coated Jesus’s brutal murder by claiming that he died for us. In this story, as we’ve created it, God’s shows “His” love, mercy and forgiveness in a most peculiar way: God loved “His” bad kids so much that, in the barbaric tradition of those who wrote the story, ”He” gave Jesus as a live sacrifice, sending “His” only innocent child to be slowly tortured to death.

We refuse to see that this story, which claims that the only condition under which God would forgive the guilty is by inhumanely brutalizing the innocent, portrays God as satanic. Worse, we promote the idea that if we believe that God placed Jesus in the hands of the sadistic Roman soldiers, “He” will  forgive our sins. The cartoon below graphically demonstrates how this principle works.

Wrong Lessons, Well Learned

And that, Boys and Girls, is why we need a refresher course in multiplication. It’s almost impossible to learn to forgive 70 times 7, as Jesus taught, when we’ve been told for thousands of years that 1) Forgiveness is not really divine and 2) If the Divine forgives at all, there are strings attached. And oh, by the way, sometimes those strings have human blood on them.

Refresher Course is Open if You Are

It’s never too late to learn elementary math, as many have discovered in the transformative Drama Queen Workshops, where we free ourselves from the drama of Earth’s myths—beliefs that portray us as separate us from each other and from the Divine. Let me share the truths that seem to speed the path toward knowing Self, trusting God, and attracting a steady flow of Divine Guidance:

1. Life is always fair.
2. God is never far.
3. Death is not “The End.”
4. Absolutely nothing is unforgivable.

Spirit presented them to me as the Drama Queen Workshop Principles. The fourth principle is the most transformative for every Soul. Forgiveness will absolutely change your eternal life, release you from the chains of anger and resentment that have bound you to your offenders since The Beginning. Do we really want to spend time with those who have hurt, disrespected or abused us? The only way to release them is to forgive them.

Forgiveness comes so naturally when we understand the other three DQW principles. When we realize that we are eternal souls that embody the Divine Spark of Love that we call God, Allah or other revered names, it’s easy. When we understand that in a what-goes-around-comes-around world, Life is always fair, it just happens. When we know that we will receive what we give, at the most perfect time in our eternal life, because death of the mortal body is not the end of us as immortal souls, we don’t hold onto thoughts, anger  or resentment about what the other person did to us. We know we won’t be held accountable for the way they treated us, only how we treated them, no matter how they treated us. We release ourselves and move on.

We’ve ignored what Jesus reportedly said in most of the New Testament in favor of scriptures portraying Godliness as unforgiving and mortally vindictive. Let’s not turn a blind eye toward “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” [Luke 6:37], “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our trespassers” [Matthew 6:12] or the unconditionally forgiving father in “Prodigal Son” parable [Luke 15:11-32]. Forgiveness appears as a recurring theme. It is the good news. God is Love is the good news. Love forgives unconditionally: Good news.

Despite these scriptures’ message that forgiveness is something we do for ourselves, we believe we’re doing our offenders a favor. We act as if we are giving them a gift they don’t deserve when, in fact, we are only hurting ourselves. We deny ourselves forgiveness when we withhold it. If we want to our sins to be forgiven, we must forgive others for theirs—as many times as necessary, as many times as we’d want to be forgiven. Yes, even 70 times 7, although I certainly wouldn’t recommend remaining in the proximity of a such a repeat offender.

Hope is alive! Just as we learned when we were agonizing over our multiplication tables, practice makes perfect. Lessons are always easier to learn when they’re fun, so I invite you to download a supply of Forgiveness Coupons from the DQW home page. Make a game of forgiving unconditionally. See for yourself that forgiveness really is divine. And discover, while you’re at it, that you are, too.

I love you!

1. God is a Being that lives outside of us—in fact, in outer space;
2. Like a genie, God grants wishes;
3. Collective prayer can influence God to do what we want, and
4. If we don’t pray in earnest, God will not lift a gigantic finger to help His distressed children.

Rarely do we consider the possibility that whatever is happening—no matter how it appears on Earth’s surface—has an underlying divine purpose. It certainly doesn’t occur to us that an immortal soul inside a person designed the experience because it had some evolutionary, purgative or karmic value.

We’ve accepted the idea that we are merely bodies—a reality created by the same folks who told us that we have dominion over an Earth that is the center of the Universe; the sun, moon and stars revolve around it. The only time we acknowledge that we have a soul is when we discuss its fate. It’s as if its life doesn’t begin until ours ends.

What if This Thing We Call “Reality” Isn’t?

Have you ever seen a film in an Imax 3D theater, where you were completely surrounded by moving images, and there seemed to be no separation between you and the action on screen? You knew it wasn’t real life when you bought the ticket and sat in a seat. Yet, there you were, heart pounding, teeth and fists clenched, blood pressure rising, screaming in horror—essentially freaking out.

And you weren’t alone. Most of the audience was sucked into this fantasy world—except the few who were snickering because everyone else believed it was real.

What if we are more than we’ve been told? What if we are eternal souls spending a fleeting moment in Universal Time by entertaining, educating and evolving ourselves on Planet Earth? What if we write and perform scripts featuring the experiences we want to have, characters we want to meet, and lessons we want to learn during our brief time on stage?

What if we’ve donned intelligent sensory costumes uniquely designed for Earth’s atmosphere—human bodies? When we’re in them, they breathe. When we leave them, they are lifeless and must be disposed.

As souls, we know we are actors on stage; but our sensory bodies believe that the experience is real. When our bodies don’t like the scenes they’re in, they’ve been taught to think, believe, visualize, demand, and definitely pray for a different ending.

Can Prayer Change a Soul’s Script?

Ask mega-church pastor Rick Warren, author of the bestseller “Purpose-Driven Life,” whose wife was diagnosed with cancer. During an interview with Billy Graham Ministries’ Decision Magazine, he revealed, “We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her.”

Is God heartless, or are we merely clueless about what God is and does? For centuries, we’ve done the same thing, expecting a different result. Why? Because we’ve been taught that thinking and questioning are signs that we have no faith.

We demonstrate our faith by praying to an outer space Being who looks like us. Sometimes the Being gives us what we want, sometimes not. But, with a few adjustments in our technique, we can get what we want through prayer—every time.

How? By becoming the ones in the theater who can distinguish reality from realistic cinema, the ones who unwaveringly affirm that there is no spot where God is not, the ones who recognize God as an invisible divine presence within each soul—regardless of the body costume it is wearing or the personality, race, gender, mental and physical health it is projecting in the physical world.

We do it by disavowing absurdism, the belief that humans exist in a purposeless chaotic world, a world so meaningless and disorderly that our God solves problems by boastfully killing every living thing, sent an innocent child to be tortured to death so that His guilty children could go free, and has threatened eternal torture to anyone who doesn’t believe that He performed these inhumane acts.

Fear of condemnation from an indisputably human and un-Christlike outer space God, earthly authorities, and even friends has forced us to demonstrate our faith by not daring to filter these details through the divine-versus-diabolical sieve. Instead of defending God’s divinity, we have declared inerrant a book that not only has blatant errors it claims that God’s behavior is fearsome, erratic and demonic. Ergo, our egos now worship a bi-polar, but mostly sadistic God. And from this God, we expect compassion, forgiveness and favor. Fascinating stuff.

Trusting God Enough to Let Your Soul to Do the Talking

If you knew you were a powerful soul who breathed life into the body you are wearing, would your prayers still focus on material things? Some bodies want—and get—so much more because they know what prayer is. More important, they know what it isn’t:

• Prayer cannot override the will or re-write the script of another soul, just as we cannot change a scene in a movie we’re watching.
• Prayer is not a platform for begging. It is an opportunity for our bodies and brains to consciously connect and commune with the Divine within.
• Prayer is not a pipeline to tell the omniscient God what we want. Doing so implies that God does not know everything and diminishes God to a vending machine.
• Prayers are always answered. But if they do not align with our souls’ desires or missions, the answer is always no.

My most powerful and productive prayers ask for direction. They express trust, submission to and acceptance of the will of the Invisible Spirit within me that I call God. My words change with the situation, as will yours; but I can share the essence of prayers that deliver precisely what I desire—every time.

When a situation has become untenable (finances, job, home, relationship): “I trust that whatever is happening now is in Divine Order, was not designed to harm me, and advances my mission as a soul. I know that it will change at the most perfect time and in the most perfect way. I accept this as an opportunity to practice patience.

“If there is a lesson to be learned through this situation/encounter and I have not already grasped it, I declare my readiness to receive and prosper from that lesson so that I can evolve to the next step on my path. Thank you, God, for your ever-present support and wise counsel.”

Death of a loved one or a love relationship: “Dear God, I hold the dear soul I knew as __________in Light, and allow myself to grieve the loss of his/her physical presence. I ask for support as I release my attachment by accepting this soul’s decision to follow its script and adhere to its schedule. I remind myself that Life is eternal, nothing is unforgivable, and all is well. Thank you, God, for this understanding.”

When facing conflict: “Mother-Father God, I choose peace, and I stand ready for the shortest route to that peace be revealed. I may or may not have any spiritual history with these souls. But whatever role I played in creating this mess at any time in my eternal life, I now shower the Christ Light of forgiveness upon it, knowing that darkness and light cannot occupy the same space at the same time. I trust that this situation is being resolved for the Highest Good of All. For that, I thank you, God.”

What’s your most powerful prayer?

Slowly but surely, Americans are shedding their blind belief in ancient misconceptions about human sexuality. The weary “Bible makes it very clear” defense for homophobic belief and behavior is losing its hateful grip on otherwise reasonable people, folks who believe that the Bible is “the Word of God”—with the exceptions of the parts they don’t believe are true.

It is no small irony that people who consider homosexuality a choice made by naturally heterosexual humans selectively choose what is true in the 20th chapter of Leviticus: They consider it diabolical for a parent to murder a child for being disrespectful, and totally wacko for us to kill everyone we know who cheats on a spouse. But the Bible makes it very clear that we should do both. We’ve chosen not to believe it, just as we’ve chosen not to believe God said that menstruation is “a sickness,” as the Bible claims.

We also don’t banish a man from society if he lies with a menstruating woman—and send her packing, too. That says a lot about human nature and and adherence to the Bible when the only verse in the 20th chapter of Leviticus that we choose to embrace is verse 13. We flaunt it with great piety to belittle, bully, discriminate and even legislate against gays and lesbians.

Why don’t we go on a killing spree, as God mandated in the rest of the chapter? Because we choose to be smarter and more evolved than to do what the Bible tells us to do.

The belief in a God who hates, judges, brutally punishes and kills was reasonable way, way, way, way back in the day. After all, these were folks who engaged in inhumane practices, extreme punishments, and solved problems by stoning and crucifying people. It’s only natural that their God and scriptures would reflect their barbarism, beliefs and limited knowledge. That doesn’t mean that their writings were accurate or that we should still be embracing it thousands of years later, which brings me to…

A Bishop, Two Ballers, and Bawdy Comedian

Homophobia used to be cool, even chic. Not so much these days. In fact, as we’ve witnessed from the balcony recently, it can be very costly.

In rapid succession, we’ve watched four high-profile men pay the high price of wearing hate like a wardrobe of Brioni and Canali suits: Atlanta megachurch pastor Bishop Eddie Long, Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah, and comedian Tracy Morgan, who recently encored a homophobic rant that drew little attention a year ago. Paying profane homage to Levitical barbarism, Morgan told his Nashville audience that he’d stab his son to death if he was gay. That crowd-pleasing imagery is sure to impact his career trajectory.

Morgan apologized. But as his 30 Rock boss Tina Fey responded, “I hope for his sake that Tracy’s apology will be accepted as sincere by his gay and lesbian coworkers at 30 Rock, without whom Tracy would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with, or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket.”

Slurring in the name of the Lord hit Bryant and Noah in the pocket, too. The NBA fined Bryant $100,000 and Noah $50,000.

It is no small irony that all four of these men, either through rage or religion, have verbally attacked others for an immutable physical characteristic: sexual orientation. Aside from the damage to their reputations and bank accounts, what else do these four guys have in common? They are Black. If someone disparages them because of their color, it is considered ignorant, condescending, dehumanizing—and hateful.

Most Blacks call themselves Christians. But if Christians really believe that Jesus freed us from the shackles of so-called Mosaic Law, why are we still citing it to denigrate others? If God’s alleged prohibition against homosexuality is applicable today, why aren’t all Levitical laws still applicable?

Who in our homophobic ensemble believes that adulterers should “certainly be put to death?” We can’t hear you, Kobe.

Research and Religion

Researchers have found homosexuality naturally present among animals—birds to mammals—who aren’t cerebral and don’t make a choice. Ditto for insects and plants. In 2004, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported in its journal, Pediatrics, that current research suggests sexual orientation is usually established during early childhood. In fact, I recently read a report on identical twin boys whose behavior as toddlers demonstrated that one was likely to grow up gay and the other straight.

So much for the nurture vs. nature debate. Although they emerged from the same womb and were reared in the same home at the same time, these children’s sexual orientation is dramatically different. Should one be punished, ostracized, ridiculed and denied the opportunity to openly love or marry whom he desires? Which one? Why? When the gay child is older, should he choose to be sexually attracted to girls so that he can be like his brother?

But wait! The spotlight on the stage has shifted to…

The Homophobic Bishop

Bishop Eddie Long, New Birth MB Church, Atlanta

The cagers and the comedian probably haven’t given a single critical thought to scholarly research on sexual orientation or the history of the Old Testament. They’ve blindly embraced these prejudices, just as generations of racists have blindly embraced beliefs in the inferiority of Blacks, Jews and women.

What’s Bishop Long’s excuse? Not only has he encountered racism on countless occasions in his life as a soul in African-American costume, he has studied theology.

Divinity schools have long taught that Moses didn’t write the so-called Mosaic Law. (Someone actually figured out that Moses couldn’t have written about his own death or about empires and individuals that existed after he left the planet. Ingenious!) So why does Bishop Long promote Leviticus 20:13 as credible and actionable?

Does he give the other inhumane Levitical laws as much credence? Why has a learned man been sucked into this hateful vortex? Does he really believe that parades, prayers and counseling can make gays and lesbians choose to be straight? If that were possible, there would be no bullied gay teens choosing suicide rather than the opposite sex.

Whose inclinations is the bishop really trying to change? If sexual attraction is something we choose and can control, would he have been center stage in a hyper-explosive hypocritical legal drama in which he was accused of sexual improprieties with four gay teens? And, oops! An update: The identity of a fifth young man, Centino Kemp, surfaced months later.

FOX5 Atlanta tracked him down in late July, as you’ll see in the photos accompanying the story. In addition to the eye makeup and Rihanna-style hairdo, Kemp had something else that distinguished him from the other four accusers: Long’s name is tattooed on his inner wrist. Below, it reads: “Never a Mistake, Always a Lesson.”

Always a Lesson

Long had vowed to fight the young men’s allegations. A legal battle could have caused their cases to suffer from the typically interminable delays in the court system. Cases without merit can also be summarily dismissed. Neither happened. The cases were resolved within months through costly out-of-court settlements.

After the settlements were announced, I decided to climb into the cyberspace balcony of Bishop Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church to watch a Sunday service, hoping for a glimmer of insight into this man of God. By the time I closed that browser tab, it was clear that whether Long settled the cases for a dollar or the rumored $15 million, he received little in return, and his congregation is getting even less.

The good bishop emerged from that eyebrow-raising legal experience trumpeting the Old Testament declaration that God is unfair. He preached that God loves some of His children more than others, and the New Birth congregation certainly was among His faves. In fact, he told the cheering crowd that God would bless them so mightily that they wouldn’t even have to pay their bills.

“You don’t have time to pay back all those debts,” he loudly declared. “Angels are waiting to give you what you want.”

B-b-b-but what about the people they owe? I wondered.

“You have favor!” He shouted, to the joyous approval of his flock. “And favor ain’t fair!” he laughed.

Suddenly it all made sense. Bishop Eddie Long believes that we can do anything we want; we don’t have to play by the rules because someone else will pay the cost of the mess we’ve made. The Jesus story in modern time.

“You have favor!” He shouted, to the joyous approval of his flock. “And favor ain’t fair!” he laughed haughtily. Fascinating stuff. The sad part is that black folk tend to believe anything our ministers say.

In the only mention of the lawsuit settlements, Long said that his father used to make some decisions he didn’t understand. And he dismissed the idea of explaining to anyone why he made the decision to settle with his accusers.

What Did We Learn?

Long knows his congregation well, and apparently knew that his Unfair God message would resonate deeply with them. Consistent with his claim that God is not equitable, he reminded the flock that God returns more than they give. That signaled that it was time for them to “seed the kingdom.”

He passed the plates, stacked high, passed by a long queue of ushers. Twice. The second time was a special $50 donation for the…Pentacost. They gave, probably expecting to receive more than they put in the plate.

The power of Long message is undeniably strong, as evidenced by the steady stream of un-churched visitors who answered the call to become members of New Birth that Sunday. They returned to their homes with Long’s lessons close to their hearts: We don’t have to consider the impact that our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors have on others. We are better than others. We have God’s favor. (And apparently members of the LGBT community don’t, unless they sue him.)

Some people are not independent thinkers. I understand that, and I’m not judging them for it. However, we have hurt countless humans over the ages because we’ve judged them based on the word of men who wrote that God solves problems by sadistically killing and torturing His children, and has ordered us to judge, discriminate against and even murder members of our human family. They called it the infallible Word of God and we’ve been parroting it for centuries.

Because we refuse to read for ourselves, we now must rely on thinking people in legislatures across the country to upend inhumane laws that these barbaric men created. Thank a loving God that they’re finally stepping up to speak truth to travesty.

Until we believe in a God that is more divine and less human, we will continue to hurt each other. We will continue to distance ourselves from the greatest commandment: Love ye one another.

Maybe the ripple effect of gay marriage laws and the love that flourishes from it will touch the hearts of homophobes such as Kobe Bryant, Joakim Noah and Tracy Morgan. Most of all, I hope it penetrates the heart of Bishop Eddie Long.

I hope it empowers him to stop hating and hiding that part of himself that ancient men with limited biological knowledge decided was a choice rather than a characteristic. The soul that is on Earth as Bishop Long might be The Appointed One, the one who came to heal millions of human hearts.

This might be his soul’s moment in eternity to help us know with certainty that beyond religion and religious teachings, there is but one God, that our God is Love and Love is fair, and that God hates no one in Its Creation—no matter whom they love.

For his soul’s sake, I hope Bishop Long doesn’t miss this magnificent healing opportunity.

Of course, imagination is a double-edged sword; it very well might be the reason so many of us are unhappy. Most of us imagine, for example, that our fate lies in the hands of an angry, judgmental and vengeful God who doesn’t think we’re worthy to be in His presence and will only allow a few of us to return home. How does that impact the way we perceive ourselves and treat others? How do worthless people behave? How likely are they to behave lovingly? If your All-Knowing Creator doesn’t find you lovable, how can you trust that you’re lovable to mere mortals? Conversely, if you knew that God was in love with you, would it matter whether anyone on planet Earth was?

God: Angry? Judgmental? Sociopathic?

How different would our life experience be if we dared to imagine that God:

• Did not put us on a planet over which He had given control to His evil nemesis?
• Did not hold us accountable for the original or subsequent sins of others?
• Did not challenge us to valiantly resist the potent magnet of The Enemy’s incessant diabolical plots—or face His wrath?
• Did not create us as humans—weaker than the stalwart Enemy and capable of error—ultimately to judge us as guilty of making human errors and sentence us to a torture chamber throughout all eternity?
• Did not design life to be complicated or painful?
• Did not give some—but not all—of us prescribed rules, regulations, rituals, restrictions and readings that must be religiously followed if we are to be saved from sadistic torture?
• Did not leave any holy books with directives that conflict each other?
• Did not create anything or anyone that is an abomination?
• Did not destroy every living thing, in a fit of rage?
• Did not unfairly torture the only innocent child to death so that His guilty children could be absolved of their wrongdoing?
• Didn’t threaten to cast you into a fiery pit, where you’d suffer forever, if you didn’t believe that He did something so inhumane (arguably satanic) to His only good child?
• Did not intend for us to be confused, controlled, frightened, miserable or unloved?

I know that this is unimaginable for many of us to respond affirmatively to those questions. For centuries, people in authority have told us that God has done all of these things. And we have fervently believed it. In fact, we’re afraid to disbelieve it or call it sadistic. But if a human did any of these things, we’d be more clear and instantaneous about defining this behavior as inhumane.

Is this God frightening and intimidating? Is Love frightening and intimidating? Do we really believe that God is Love if we accept claims that God is frightening and intimidating?

Is there a correlation between what we believe and what we experience in our everyday lives? How does the amount of time we spend worrying about the future, fretting about or regretting the past affect us now and in the future? What is the real reason so many of us suffer from unhappiness and disappointment?

The answer was in this video: It’s simpler than we realize, and requires little or no effort. Really. That’s why “The Present Moment,” is so profound and so powerful.

There is one caveat: You may find that the graphics in the video often compete with or obscure the empowering message in the text. I did, perhaps because I spent so many years in television production.

But just in case you also find that some of the words blend into the background, I froze each frame so that I could capture those words for you. You may download it here. I don’t want you to miss the blessing these words have for you. I hope you watch until the end so that you don’t miss this important message:

The Present Moment is the void where nothing exists and where everything is possible. The Angel can then spread its wings. That Angel, pushing with love, is YOU, alive and vibrant.

Know that I love you—no matter what! If I can do that as a human, just imagine how divinely unconditional God’s love is.

Namaste!

At some point, life as we know it will end. But will it happen because an angry God is coming to judge us, grant eternal life to all who believe that He had Jesus slowly tortured to death, and sadistically torture those who don’t believe He’d do something so satanic? And will it happen next Saturday, May 21, as some folks say?

Who has time to SIT?

Why not next Saturday? It’s as good a guess as any. And let’s face it; there have been many guesses.

“The end” as a human obsession

The Essenes, members of a monklike Jewish sect, were preparing for Judgment Day before the birth of the man we now call Jesus. Scholars say that more than 60 years after Jesus’s death, John Mark, a companion of his disciple Peter, wrote Peter’s recollections of the time he spent with Jesus. Among those recollections, Jesus’s prediction that the end of times would come during the first century. In Chapter 9 of Mark’s gospel, he writes that Jesus told a gathering that some of them would be alive on Judgment Day.

This claim is repeated almost verbatim in Matthew 16 and Luke 9, since both scribes “borrowed” liberally from Mark’s text years later. In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians (Chapters 4 and 5), he, too, warned that the end of the world was near: It would occur during their lifetime. None of these scribes actually knew Jesus. All were incorrect.

Throughout the ages, many others have predicted the so-called End of Times. In most cases, including the latest, the predictions were based on “the inerrant word of God”–the writings of ancient people who fervently believed the Earth was flat, that God lived above the clouds, that the Earth was the center of the universe, and the sun and moon revolved around it.

What’s fascinating is that from these unscientific people, we are basing our scientific calculations.

whom do we trust?

At the heart of the Judgment Day belief is this divine question: Will Earth and every living thing that occupies it die of natural causes–or will it be destroyed by a sadistically punitive God who has no regard for the human life He created, and whose punishment exceeds all human crimes? And if we really believe that God is so diabolical, how do we differentiate Him from the so-called “Enemy?”

Of course, ancient scribes painted a more rosy picture: They claim that God so loved the world that He “gave” His only begotten son. If we believe this, they say, God won’t torture us throughout eternity. Fear is a great control mechanism. Always has been.

Now we know what giving is—and what it’s not. Or maybe we don’t, so let’s check the dictionary, shall we: Give means to make a present of, to place in the hands of, or to endure the loss of; sacrifice. Giving does not mean handing over your child to sadists, knowing that they are going to nail him to a cross and subject him to a very slow and excruciatingly painful death.

How many loving parents would do this? More pertinent, who among us would be glad that our brother was murdered for a crime that we committed? Is gratitude the appropriate response?

I know that this is dangerous turf on which I’m treading. I’ve been told repeatedly that I cannot call myself a Christian if I do not believe that God sent Jesus here to be slaughtered so that I might live. In other words, if I were a real Christian, I would know that torturing an innocent man to death is not sadistic, if it is an act of God.

Let me be clear: I am not questioning any act of God. I’m questioning whether this particular act is God’s. Is there the slightest bit of the Divine tucked inside live sacrifice?

If we believe scriptures that say that God is Love, isn’t it incumbent upon us to ask: Does Love solve problems by killing any of Its children for any reason?

We Christians clearly have a double standard of behavior—and the standard is considerably lower for God. Fascinating stuff. It reminds me of a post I saw on Facebook several months ago. A minister shared a hypothetical scenario that went something like this:

There were two brothers. The older one, who’d previously served a couple of jail terms, had just been arrested again. If convicted, he faced a minimum of 30 years in prison.

His younger brother was studious, college bound and had never been in trouble. The minister said that the young men’s parents had asked if they should ask the younger brother take the rap for his brother. Since he had a clean record, he’d probably only serve 18 months. Afterward, he could resume his studies and go on with his life, while giving his brother a chance to clean up his act.

The overwhelming consensus was that the older brother should take responsibility for his own actions. It would be unfair for the innocent brother to sacrifice 18 months of his life for a crime he didn’t commit. Some even noted that the older brother seemed to be a habitual criminal and probably would be arrested again anyway, making a mockery of the younger brother’s sacrifice.

Where have we heard that story before? I was fascinated that these  Christians—folks who do not object to Jesus taking the rap for crimes he didn’t commit—didn’t see the parallel.

His sacrifice far outweighed an 18-month prison term. And guess what? Neither his death nor resurrection ended sin on Earth. But of course, the All-Knowing God probably predicted that.

So, if sadistically slaughtering Jesus wasn’t going to change the world’s behavior, why would God snuff him out a mere three years into his good news ministry? Isn’t it more likely that the Romans mentioned in the scriptures actually committed the crime?

We all know that this isn’t the first time in history that God has been blamed for acts of inhumanity. Just a few years ago, a world leader justified violence against God’s children in Iraq by insisting that God told him to do it.

Such outrageous declarations vilify God. But we so love the words written and repeatedly mistranslated by man that we have given our only begotten brains to the trash heap so that we can blindly believe that God would be so demonic.

We have a double standard: If a blood-thirsty posse approached the home of a guilty man, and his father pushed his innocent brother onto the porch, we’d declare that this father was pure evil. Why can’t we see the parallel when we read that God has done the same thing—and why aren’t we challenging such an implausible accusation?

This really would be a Good Friday, if we took time out to ponder whether we really believe that God is Love. It is impossible to believe that if we also believe that God does things that Love simply would not do.